If I could offer a word of experience from another forum with a small (and potentially dwindling) userbase:

When you’re offering a forum for a niche market, having a separate area for the chaff is a good thing. People occasionally like to talk nonsense with a bunch of people they feel a sense of community with. When you remove the outlet for off-topic chatter, one of two things tends to happen:

1. The regular files fill up with it instead.
2. The regular files fill up with it, people get narky about the off-topic content, some form of autocratic moderation ensues and people leave.

Really, the obvious answer is: don’t read it. If the ‘recent posts’ thing is an issue, change it to not include ‘Aldershot’ posts.

Yes, good point – something I’d previously overlooked. And which means my previous “Don’t forget the RSS feed” comment can be ignored. It’s not worth me subscribing to the individual fora at this stage, with so much unread in my feed – but once I’ve caught up, I’ll do it that way.

To be clear: I wouldn’t want Aldershot closed, for some of the reasons others have given – and I’m sure I’ve posted to it myself from time to time. But when a lengthy OT thread develops, my feed fills up and I become less inclined to read it…

And that effect just snowballs until there are thousands of unread posts – I think it’s currently around 3,000 (and peaked at well over 5,000 at one point). There are probably (ahem) “one or two” items that I would have posted on RISCOSitory had I seen them1.

(All of which is made worse by having been mega-busy this year)

But the separate feeds pretty much solves the issue for me.

1 And still will; I need to do a hefty catch-up ASAP (either one mega snippets post, or broken down into several) before sifting through everything I have to come up with the initial options to discuss for the awards poll.

I shall quietly watch what happens, but I should be very sad if Aldershot were to disappear and off-topic posts (in moderation) elsewhere became so frowned upon that they too disappeared.

Sure, other fora exist, and I inhabit some of those as well. But the people there are not the same people we have have here. I like this group and would miss the off-topic posts here. I’d still be here for the RISCOS stuff, but the place would be diminished.

I don’t give two monkeys about computer games, whether bang up to the cutting edge, or 1980s retro, or anything in between. But I don’t bang on about the forum getting cluttered with such matters.

I don’t give two monkeys about computer games, whether bang up to the cutting edge, or 1980s retro, or anything in between.

Same here. In the days of the BBC micro I found disassembling a game (all that filthy language!) generally more interesting than playing it. But good luck to those who made money from them. And many thanks to Mr Upton for carrying through the Raspberry Pi project, and all those who made it possible to run RISC OS 5 on it.

Same here. In the days of the BBC micro I found disassembling a game (all that filthy language!) generally more interesting than playing it.

Pre-BBC micro I built a programmable games computer, cased it up in an aluminium and plywood case, checked everything and then handed the finished item to my sisters to play games with/on.
Some people like that stuff but it’s never interested me other than to try and figure out how some bits worked.
Each to their own I say.

There’s a reason why it might provide a different experience for you. ;-)

:-P

And that effect just snowballs until there are thousands of unread posts

Yikes. But… wait, each page represents 25 messages. If we skip to the end of page 20 (which is 500 posts), we’re back to November 5th. Do you read that infrequently?

I don’t give two monkeys about computer games,

Ditto. There are numerous things here, both on and off topic (and some, such as this, in the wrong topic), which are of no interest to me. I just flick the screen (phone) or twiddle the mouse roller (PC) and pass by the stuff I’m not interested in.

Yes, it’s sad that some of us only have virtual friends to discuss things of a wider nature with

Hmmm, who could you been referring to? ;-) FWIW, the “virtual friends” concept is probably one that my mother would make. For me, there’s no “virtual”, just a friend I have yet to meet in person.

…and contribute most of the off-topic content,

And yet, here we all are, polluting the Wish list topic with something that has outlived that which was being moaned about.

Yes, it’s sad that some of us only have virtual friends to discuss things of a wider nature with

Most of my “face-to-face circles of fiends” seemed to disappear onto social networks with other means of contact (email, phone etc) eventually drying up. I refuse to participate in Web 2.0 social networks. I’m not sure if that situation says more about me or about them.

And that effect just snowballs until there are thousands of unread posts

Yikes. But… wait, each page represents 25 messages. If we skip to the end of page 20 (which is 500 posts), we’re back to November 5th. Do you read that infrequently?

When I’m busy, yes – and I’ve been very busy this year.

I said that it was around 3,000 unread post at the mo – I’m on the right machine now, so I can tell you the actual number is 2,902.

When I have a little time, but not enough to properly catch up (and I may not be at the machine with the RSS reader anyway) I sometimes glance at the Recent Posts page – which is why I occasionally post to something ‘current’ – but if there’s nothing there of interest on any given day, that might result in me not looking again for a good few days, so I miss a lot that way.

Community is community. It’s just the Internet is kind of a 4 dimensional one. Or perhaps 5 because time needs to be counted. Face to face friends. I’ve seen three of them, maybe six or seven times individuallyin the last fifteen-ish years. I’m not a hermit either by any means. It’s just the way my life is. Online fora are about the only means I have of sharing interests with others. Yes this is off topic about off topic discussion but there is a point. Things like user group meetings, LAN parties etc were where people with a common interest could converge. They would also talk about other things. That’s what Aldershot is in a sense. I’m in entirely the wrong part of the world to attend any of the shows etc. so this is as good as it gets.

Again I restate that perhaps it could be left out of the default RSS feed. I’m not a moderator nor an admin or webmaster here, and am unaware of the capabilities of the forum software. But surely it wouldn’t be out of the question to keep it from being lumped in with the main feed?
It really does seem like the best compromise.

I’m not opposed to the idea of an off-topic forum for the purpose of engendering a bit of community spirit but people have to decide what they want to achieve. If the idea is to have a place where other topics can be discussed then that’s great as long as 1) people don’t use on-topic threads as a springboard to “take it to Aldershot” and 2) they don’t get the idea that “anything goes” in that forum.

Some other forums have rules about what is acceptable to discuss, or they have codes of conduct. This isn’t because the people making those rules are on a power trip – there are pragmatic reasons why you might want to avoid certain topics. For example, there may well have been people who joined the discussion about Brexit with the idea that, because they share similar computing preferences to the others in the forum, they would agree on that topic as well. As a result of that discussion, perhaps they don’t feel like participating here so much.

Some topics are divisive and it requires a bit of consideration and restraint from members to ensure that the forums remain friendly, as well as being a place for constructive discussions.

Someone sent an e-mail pointing me at this thread and it’s a decent feature request – essentially, be able to mark a forum as something that shouldn’t appear in feeds, be they RSS or HTML equivalents (“Recent Posts”).

If I were add such a feature and flag Aldershot as not-in-feeds, it would clearly make some people happy. It would still be visible from the boards list of course and accessible by all the normal methods.

BUT – would anyone be annoyed that Aldershot posts were missing from the RSS or HTML recent posts lists?